Soldier's Redemption Page 8

  “Then who is?”

  “I don’t know. I was told to direct my attention to a string of attacks on tourists. We can’t have that.”

  Cole and Skylar both sat back, a little too surprised to react.

  “And so, if you will excuse me.”

  “How do we find out who is in charge of the case now?” Skylar finally said. “My aunt and uncle—”

  “Your uncle is aware of everything that happens here, Ms. Pope.”

  “But he would—”

  “You are an American,” he added. “Maybe things are run differently in your country. But here we neither encourage nor desire the public to take part in our investigations.” He stood abruptly and added, “And now, if you will excuse me, I am late for that appointment I mentioned.”

  And don’t let the door hit you on your way out, his tone added.

  * * *

  “SO, WHAT’S GOING ON?” Cole asked as they left the building.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  “Kilo was different than before. Less solicitous of you, for one thing, as though he was angry about something.”

  She nodded. She’d noticed that, too.

  He stopped her at the bottom of the steps. “I have to go to Slovo tomorrow to meet with a distributor,” he said. “If you come with me, we could stop and see if we can find the town Aneta’s family comes from. Maybe they would have answers.”

  “Answers to what, exactly?” she said.

  “To what was bothering Aneta. Was she having an affair? Had she talked to them about leaving? Stuff like that. And then after I meet with my distributor, you could give me the grand tour of Slovo by night.”

  “That’s a five-minute adventure,” she said.

  “But we’d have the whole day together,” he said, leaning close enough to kiss her.

  “It sounds like fun, but I think I’ll have to pass,” she said.

  “You know how to reach me if you change your mind,” he said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  They walked in silence toward the gallery. “Will you have dinner with me tonight?” he asked as they approached his rental car.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  He met her gaze and held it. “Or won’t?”

  She tilted her head. “I guess a little of both. My uncle left a note this morning asking me to be home this evening for my aunt. I can’t leave. She’s very upset about Aneta. It’s like the more she thinks about it, the worse she feels.”

  What Skylar didn’t add was her determination to talk to her uncle about Ian Banderas and the odd and dangerous woman stalking him. She didn’t want to get Cole any more involved than he already was.

  “That’s the can’t part,” he said. “What’s the won’t part?” When she didn’t immediately respond, he added, “This has to do with last night, doesn’t it?”

  “We’re going way too fast,” she said. “And it’s not just your fault. When it comes to you, I lack a certain amount of self-control. But there’s more. You’re not being entirely frank with me, and that makes me nervous.”

  He opened his mouth as if to protest, then seemed to think better of it. “Doesn’t everybody have secrets?”

  “Probably. Secrets between friends is one thing. But between lovers, it’s another. Too risky.”

  “So, I’m too dangerous to justify the risk?” he whispered, leaning closer.

  Take a breath. “Yes.”

  “I may be worth it,” he whispered as his lips landed on hers, warm, soft and full of what the hell, life is short. Despite everything, she had to admit she welcomed his kiss, at least for a moment, then she pulled away. “That doesn’t help.”

  “When it comes to this particular matter, my goal isn’t to be helpful.” He kissed her forehead and her cheek. “I want to finish what we started last night,” he whispered. His words ricocheted through her body.

  “Now that your head is all better,” she added.

  “Exactly.”

  She pulled away and looked him in the eye. “You’re lying to me.”

  He stared at her, his blue eyes unfathomable, and as usual, the feeling there was something bubbling right under the surface was impossible to ignore. “Listen, Cole, if you ever decide to come clean with me, let me know, okay?”

  “Is there no way you can trust I would never hurt you?” he said with a gaze that devoured her.

  “I hate to rattle off a cliché, but trust has to be earned.”

  “And I haven’t earned it?”

  “Can you honestly say you aren’t hiding something important from me?”

  His gaze delved so deep it reached all the way to her heart and beyond. She was afraid to breathe. All he had to do was tell her she was letting her imagination get away with her. It’s what she wanted to hear.

  “No, I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Chapter Eight

  “How well did you really know Aneta?” Skylar asked her aunt. They had settled in her aunt’s suite after a light supper. Eleanor Ables lay on the lounge, bundled in blankets trying to stay warm in a room already too hot.

  Skylar waited for an answer while sewing a row of tiny red buttons onto her newest creation, a short woolen skirt with a flattering flare. She’d finished the matching jacket a week before, and it kind of startled her to realize that was before she’d met Cole, before Aneta’s murder, before everything changed.

  Her aunt finally responded. “I’ve been trying to think. Two years, maybe a little longer. She answered an ad I placed in the newspaper. You should have seen her. Pretty, of course, but very poor and it showed. I took her to my salon, got her a good haircut and gave her some clothes that didn’t fit me anymore. She changed from a little weed to a lovely flower.”

  “Were you close to her?”

  “In a way,” her aunt said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “Aneta had a kind of natural reserve. She wasn’t the type of girl who gushed about boyfriends or movies.”

  “Did she talk about her sister?”

  “Occasionally. Once she asked if it was okay if she gave her sister a sweater I had given her. I told her of course it was okay. It was hers to do with as she pleased.” More wiping of the eyes and she looked at Skylar with a haunted expression. “You know I couldn’t have children. Aneta filled that void a little in her way. I can’t believe she would steal something from me.”

  “I guess, technically, she didn’t,” Skylar said. “Many of your things were much more valuable than Mr. Machnik’s painting, but that’s what she took.”

  Skylar’s aunt actually looked cheered by this take on the facts. “I want to know what happened to her no matter how awful it is. Luca won’t tell me anything that he believes will upset me, so I’ll have to depend on you. Promise me that you’ll let me know the truth.”

  “Of course,” Skylar said.

  “Good. Luca can be so protective.”

  Skylar snipped the thread and stuck the needle in the pincushion as there was a light rapping on her aunt’s door. A moment later, Skylar’s uncle entered the room. He looked pretty exhausted as he crossed the floor to kiss his wife and pat Skylar’s head.

  “Eleanor, dearest, it’s late. You should be asleep,” he said, casting a scowl at the nurse.

  “Don’t blame Greta,” Eleanor said, referring to her caretaker. “Skylar and I have been visiting.” She cast Skylar a look that clearly warned not to confide in Luca what she had asked Skylar to do. “But I am tired,” she added.

  Skylar stood up and stretched, kind of glad to get a reprieve from the sweltering bedroom yet dreading the long, sleepless night ahead of her. She knew as soon as her brain stopped sweating that she’d start thinking about Cole.

  “May I talk to you for a few minutes when you’re done in here?” she asked her uncle, her voice soft so as not to alarm her aunt.

  “Of course. Wait for me in my study?”

  “Okay. Shall I have the cook send you up a late supper?”

  “Thank you,
no. I ate hours ago,” he said. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

  As she closed the door behind her, she heard her uncle humming the lullaby and glanced back over her shoulder. He sat on the bed beside Aunt Eleanor, holding her hand, his eyes closed.

  Skylar deposited her sewing supplies in her room and hung the skirt in the closet, then went along to her uncle’s study. She was a little nervous about burdening him with any more problems, but she had the feeling he was used to getting to the bottom of things and she didn’t need to protect him. The more she thought about it, the more she agreed with Cole: Banderas was up to no good, and if that was true, then she owed it to her uncle to alert him to it.

  Thinking of Cole made a well of despair open in her gut. She’d as good as kissed him off today, and for the life of her, she couldn’t pinpoint one solid reason for doing so. They’d only known each other for a handful of days; what made her think she had the right to know all his secrets? Wasn’t that just a little bit presumptuous? And couldn’t she have just refused to sleep with him until they got to know each other better? Isn’t that what normal people do?

  Uncle Luca arrived as she was sitting down in front of his big ornate desk, a gift from her aunt on their twentieth wedding anniversary. It was hard to look at that highly carved antique and not wonder who else had sat behind it. Old furniture and old houses always seem to carry ghosts along with them.

  “Would you like a brandy?” he asked, pausing at the built-in bar.

  “That would be nice,” she said, mainly to be sociable.

  He handed her a small snifter. The heady fumes of the brandy assailed her nose as she swirled the glass. He sat down, his arms resting on the desktop, his hands folded around his glass. “You look troubled,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She took a deep breath, unsure where to start. How did you tell a man he might have trouble in his own office? “You might have trouble in your office,” she blurted out.

  His eyebrows inched up his forehead. “What?”

  “Ian Banderas.”

  His expression froze. “What about him?”

  She set the untouched snifter aside and got to her feet. “There’s a woman obsessed with him in some way.”

  “Well, I suppose he’s not a bad-looking fellow.”

  “No, not like that. She’s twenty years older than him. I’ve seen her twice now. The first time she was pleading with him. I don’t know what she wanted, but she was so distraught you could feel it in the air. The second time she apparently followed him to this house. She hit Cole Bennett by mistake, thinking it was Ian.”

  “Who is this woman?”

  “Her name is Svetlana Dacho. She seems to be convinced Ian is responsible for her daughter’s disappearance.”

  Her uncle took a sip of his brandy, frowning into the glass. “The name means nothing to me,” he said at last. “You say she hit Cole Bennett?”

  “Yes, right outside your house. It was very dark, and she mistook him for Ian.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What?”

  “Are you sure she wasn’t really waiting to attack Mr. Bennett?”

  For a moment, Skylar sat there, her mind racing through the events of the night before. “I’m certain,” she said at last. “Positive.”

  “Well, I’m not,” he said.

  “Uncle Luca, please, trust me on this. She was horrified when she saw who she’d clobbered. She kept saying she killed the wrong man. And when Ian Banderas’s name was mentioned, she ran off into the dark.”

  “I will talk with him, of course,” her uncle said. “No doubt this woman is the mother of some girlfriend of Ian’s who she felt Ian led astray. I can assure you she is wrong.”

  Was her uncle so determined to give Ian Banderas a fair deal that he wasn’t really hearing what Skylar had to say? She was frustrated at her inability to communicate her concern and worried, too, that her uncle’s lack of response on this matter could come back to haunt him if Ian was as shady as Skylar was beginning to think he was.

  “I also spoke to Detective Kilo today,” she said. “He’s been taken off Aneta’s murder case.”

  “Did you search him out?” he asked.

  “Yes. I wanted to know about the lead you mentioned.”

  “You went alone?”

  “No. After I found the stolen painting—do you know about that?”

  “Yes. Kilo informed me it had been recovered and would be returned to Mr. Machnik as soon as possible. You were saying?”

  “I met up with Cole, and we decided to talk to Kilo together.”

  A knot formed in her uncle’s jaw. He tossed down the rest of his brandy and got to his feet, coming to stand near Skylar where she’d paused her pacing to stand next to the bookcase that was covered with decades of family photos.

  “This man is everywhere,” he said.

  “You mean Cole?” she asked, looking up from the image of her twelve-year-old self fishing on Lake Slovo.

  “Yes. I think it wise if you curtail seeing him again.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I get the distinct impression he’s a troublemaker. I do not want him in this house again.”

  “That’s your decision, of course,” she said. “However, whether I see him outside your house is mine.”

  He smiled. “You think I’m treating you like a child?”

  “A little bit,” she said with a small laugh.

  “Forgive me. It’s an occupational hazard of a fond uncle. Basically, you are a stranger here. This is the first time you’ve lived and worked in Kanistan for more than a week or two at a time. Your aunt would never forgive me if something happened to you. How can I not try to protect you?”

  She smiled up at him. “I promise I’ll use my head, okay?”

  He gave her a quick hug. “If only that were enough.”

  “When did Kilo tell you that I found the painting?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Does it matter?”

  “I’m just wondering who took him off Aneta’s murder investigation. I mean, was it before or after the painting was recovered? Whichever, he seemed perturbed by it.”

  “Maybe he had other matters on his mind,” her uncle offered. “Of course, I know little about how the police work, but I am sure the job is extremely stressful.”

  There he went again, protecting her. Kilo had said her uncle knew everything that went on in the police office, and her uncle was telling her he didn’t know how it was run. The truth probably lay somewhere in the middle.

  “I beg you not to concern yourself with these tawdry matters,” he said as he moved back toward his desk. “Is there anything else I can do for you? It’s growing late, and I have a few calls to make yet tonight.”

  “No. Good night, Uncle Luca.”

  “Good night, my dear,” he said. “And, Skylar, just be warned that I will look after you any way I must. To do less would be negligent.”

  She started to protest again, but what was the use? He was a proud and stubborn man, and as long as she was a guest in his house, he would demand she play by his rules. Perhaps not out-and-out verbally, but the pressure was there. He was warning her that she wouldn’t see Cole again as long as she was in Kanistan.

  That was okay, right? Hadn’t she as much as told Cole the same thing a few hours earlier? So why did it annoy her now? Her uncle was picking up the phone as she left the office, and she heard the first few words he spoke as she closed the door. “Send someone to my place—”

  Someone to his place. Within a half-dozen steps, the impact of those words hit her. She’d bet money he was arranging for someone to come keep an eye on her.

  She hurried to her room and threw a few things in a large carryall, then took the time to write a note that she subsequently sealed in an envelope addressed to her aunt. She propped it on her untouched pillow, then went down the servant’s stairs, exiting into the kitchen that was blissfully empty.

  But all that had taken time
, and her uncle’s office was very close by.

  She let herself out the door without turning on any lights and stood in the deepest shadows for a few moments, allowing her vision to adapt to the darkness. Then, keeping to the edge of the driveway, she approached the gatehouse, well aware of the security cameras and that she was probably being watched.

  The truth was she felt melodramatic and yet nervous. She did not want to alarm her uncle or her aunt, but she wasn’t content to sit in her room, either, not with her aunt’s pleas still ringing in her ears. She’d lived alone for several years back home, and this feeling that she was being watched—even if it was done out of concern for her—was getting old. When she got to the street, she kept walking, using the internet access on her phone to look up Svetlana Dacho’s address.

  It was too late for a social call, but as this visit could hardly be labeled social, she hailed a cab and felt tucked away from curious eyes as she scooted into the warm interior. She told the driver to take a circuitous route, just in case, to the general area of the city in which Svetlana lived.

  At least the late hour would probably guarantee she would be home. Skylar told the driver to let her out a couple of blocks further on, exited the cab and paid him, waiting until his taillights disappeared before turning around and hurrying back to the right address.

  Svetlana had a mailbox in the lobby like Aneta had had, and Skylar couldn’t help wishing Cole was there to climb those dark stairs with her. She sidled past a group of teenagers who whistled after her, past a couple making out on a landing, erupting at last on the fourth floor. She hurried down the hall, the feeling of oppression that had started in the hallway outside her uncle’s den still with her.

  She knocked rapidly. The whole thing was eerily reminiscent of knocking on Aneta’s door and she shivered. But this time, it was answered almost immediately by the woman Skylar had last seen in her uncle’s driveway. Though she appeared worn out and exhausted, it was the first time Skylar had seen her when she wasn’t a complete emotional wreck, and she appeared a generation younger, surely not much over forty.

  It was obvious from Svetlana’s expression that she recognized Skylar, as well, and she immediately clutched her throat and backed away.